


Not Your Time

by angrymermaids



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Found Family, Gen, Missing Scene, Nile POV, No One Likes Hospitals, Some light angst, The Gang Takes Care Of Andy, The Healing Power Of Ice Cream Cones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25583527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angrymermaids/pseuds/angrymermaids
Summary: Andy is still bleeding. Nile suggests the unthinkable: going to the hospital.
Comments: 33
Kudos: 231





	Not Your Time

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene between the end of the fight at Merrick Labs and the pub scene.

“Andy. I think you should, like... go to the hospital.”

Just like that, the others were all staring at Nile like she’d sprouted another head. Wordlessly, Nicky and Joe looked from her to Andy, who had propped herself in a corner with her knees drawn up to her chest, and Booker looked at the floor.

Andy huffed, and then grimaced a little. “Why?”

“Because you were _shot_. And you’re still bleeding.” Honestly, what did she think was a normal response to _being shot_?

“If it’s my time, it’s my time. And if it isn’t, I’ll heal.”

“What the _hell_ , Andy.” Nile went to her and crouched at her wounded side. “Let me see it. Whether or not it’s ‘your time’ might depend on treatment, and I’m not going to just wait around and see what happens.”

Andy resisted at first, but let Nile peel back her bloodied shirt and look at the wound once she realized that Nile was going to make herself a nuisance until she relented. Merrick’s doctor—Nile didn’t know or care what her name was—had done something for it, but the dressings were soaked with fresh blood. It had naturally reopened, and probably gotten worse, during the fight. And she might have taken another bad hit or two at some point.

“She’s right. It’s not like the old days.” Nicky had come up with a first-aid kit and was already going through its contents. Nile briefly wondered why they had a first-aid kit in the safehouse at all, but then remembered Copley’s wall of old photos: Andy on the _Carpathia_ , Booker in the streets on 9/11, the whole team at the liberation of Auschwitz.

“Do we have any QuikClot in there?”

“Hmm… I think we got this kit before they invented QuikClot.”

_Damn it_. “Tampons? Big wad of gauze?”

“Big wad of gauze.”

Andy, who had been stubbornly quiet while Nile inspected her, finally winced when she started packing gauze into both the entry and exit wounds. She was acting like a skinny street dog Nile had seen in Afghanistan one time, picking along on three legs and favoring the fourth, clinging to the shadows and warily watching people go by until Dizzy opened a packet of MRE peanut butter. He allowed Nile to pull a rusty tack out of his paw and clean up the wound as long as Dizzy kept the peanut butter coming, and afterward, he sniffed their hands and wagged his tail before slinking back to his street-dog life.

Behind Nicky, Joe was wiping dried blood off his face and arms with what looked like a Clorox wipe. “Need to find a hospital where we won’t attract too much attention,” he said.

“I’m already googling it,” came Booker’s voice from the corner, underscored by typing.

Joe shot him a black look. “You’d better be.” He tossed Nicky the tube of wipes, which he caught without even looking. “And we’d better clean ourselves up a little, as long as we have time. Andy? How are you feeling, boss?”

Andy’s lip curled. “Like shit.”

“Blood’s stopped soaking through. For now, at least.” Nile accepted a wipe from Nicky. “The sooner we get to the hospital, the better.”

* * *

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a hospital. In this capacity, I mean.” Nicky paused, brow furrowed, thinking back. “Definitely not in the last century.”

“Really? Not even with all the…” Nile gestured vaguely with her cup of weak waiting-room tea. “All the rescuing?”

“Hospitals are usually where people end up after they’re done being rescued. Or we see them as strategic points on a map—places to protect from bombs, places with compromised supply lines, things like that. Or occasionally as places to rescue someone _from_.”

“We’ve been war medics before, but not recently,” Joe added. Nile wondered what “recently” meant to him. “But Nicky’s right, I don’t remember the last time I actually sat and waited for someone else to treat a friend.”

They’d managed to get Andy into the A&E department without any complications, though there were a few hair-raising moments when the triage nurse asked for Andy’s date of birth (“January first, nineteen… ffo… sssixty-one,” to which the nurse looked like she wanted to ask which brand of moisturizer Andy used but thankfully said nothing) and again when the nurse mentioned that they’d be notifying the police of the injury, but everyone figured that they’d deal with that situation as it came. The TV screens in the waiting room were all showing news footage of emergency vehicles and yellow tape at Merrick Labs, so it seemed they would have some time to either come up with a viable story or whisk Andy away before the questioning started.

That was the big unknown: how Andy was, how long she’d be in surgery, and what would happen afterward. Of the four of them, Nile had the most-informed guesses, but she avoided airing them. No use jinxing it.

“I waited while Dizzy got her wisdom teeth out,” she said. That was only a year ago, but it felt like ages. “She waited for mine and got me an ice cream cone after, so I owed her one. She didn’t want an ice cream cone, though. Turns out she had five wisdom teeth in there, and four of them were impacted, and she ended up getting like ten shots in her gums.”

There was a confused pause. “I understood all of those words individually,” said Booker from a few seats away. Joe shot him another glare, as he did whenever something reminded him of Booker’s continued presence in the waiting room, but apparently he’d decided that Booker’s ass-beating (or whatever) could wait until they were sure Andy was safe.

“Okay, where did I lose you? Wisdom teeth? Ice cream cone?”

“Third molars,” Nicky supplied. “They take them out of young people these days. I’m not sure why.”

“I think it’s because people used to lose teeth more often. You know, before dentists and toothbrushes and stuff like that. So you’d need the ‘extra’ teeth, but now people keep more of their teeth and we don’t have enough room in our mouths.” That _seemed_ right, but Nile didn’t remember where she’d heard it. “At least, I think that’s why.”

There was another lull. A news anchor continued reporting on the carnage at Merrick Labs before the feed cut back to the studio, where they’d brought on an analyst to talk about Steven Merrick’s involvement in an insulin price-gouging scandal earlier that year. The narrative seemed to be suggesting a vigilante attack on the company in retaliation for the scandal, and the news team did not seem terribly upset about it, but they did speculate a little about the vigilantes’ tactical background and financial support and what the attack would mean for the industry.

“I brought my grandfather to Baghdad for cataract surgery when I was a young man,” Joe said at length. “I don’t remember his face. But I remember that it happened. He regained his sight and lived to be ninety-three years old.”

“That’s amazing,” said Nile.

“It was. He was a great man. And even now there is nothing in the world like Baghdad before the Mongol invasion.”

Nile could think of nothing to say to that. She could only wonder if she’d seen anything in her world that would, eventually, become like Joe’s memory of Baghdad. For a moment, Nicky looked like he was about to add something, but he instead just pulled Joe closer and kissed his temple. Maybe he was thinking along the same lines.

* * *

The team hovered over Andy as soon as they were allowed to see her. Still groggy from the anesthesia, she squinted at each of their faces in turn before grabbing clumsily at Booker’s shirt. “Guess it’s not my time yet,” she mumbled.

“Not yet, boss,” Booker agreed, clasping her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m ready for you to stop asking me that.”

Joe and Nicky both looked like they’d been about to ask the same thing. There was an awkward pause while everyone tried to think what else there _was_ to say, but then a doctor arrived to go over her findings and what the next steps would be, and at least for the moment they just had to listen.

Apparently the bullet had destroyed most of Andy’s left kidney, and it was nothing but a stroke of luck that she hadn’t already bled to death. The doctor said that they’d keep her in the hospital for at least a few days and again mentioned the police, but Nile could see the wheels in Andy’s mind turning over how to avoid both of those things.

“Fewer shamans than I remember,” Andy said once the doctor had gone. She closed her eyes and sank back against the pillow. “There should be at least one shaman. Pretty sure that’s how it works.”

She slept a little. The others lingered by her side, saying nothing. Nile watched the bag of saline shrink a little more with each drip and wondered if it would be finished before the police arrived. Her normal mind wanted to tell Andy to stay put like the doctor said, but her _real_ mind—the one that had taken over in the back of that shitty Russian airplane—knew that was unlikely to happen.

The police had not arrived by the time Andy woke up, decided she was ready to leave the hospital, and put on the extra set of clothes Nile had brought for her. Leaving was simpler than Nile would have guessed: Nicky went first to make sure the coast was clear, followed by Booker supporting Andy on his arm, with Nile and Joe watching their backs as they just… walked out. There was a lot to be said for acting like you didn’t need permission to go wherever you wanted.

Everyone was silent as Nicky navigated darkened streets on the way back to the safehouse. _We’ll have to ditch the car soon_ , Nile thought. Another point for the real mind.

“This changes nothing,” Andy finally said from the passenger seat. “Immortal or not, I’m not retiring. I die in battle or not at all.”

“Could be like Theodore Roosevelt,” Nile mused. “They said that Death had to take him in his sleep, otherwise there’d be a fight.”

“Theodore Roosevelt was a pussy,” Andy retorted, and Nile believed her.

“You need to rest before there’s any talk of getting back to work,” Nicky said. “And the rest of us need to lay low. No plans. No jobs. Not yet. We’re going straight to the safehouse.” He paused. “Unless you want an ice cream cone. Do you want an ice cream cone, boss?”

The team waited. The car hit a pothole, and Andy winced. They waited some more.

“I’d like that,” she said quietly.

“All right. Let’s get you an ice cream cone.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on Tumblr](https://actualmermaid.tumblr.com/), come say hi! The Old Guard has eaten my brain for now but my main fandom is LOTR/The Silmarillion.


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